Published: September 11, 2011

CORRECTION APPENDED

Days after the attacks, researchers at the Columbia Center for Oral History began asking New Yorkers to describe their experience of the most harrowing day in the city's history. The following account, the fall of the trade center told moment by moment and person by person, is drawn from the more than 600 interviews collected in the September 11, 2001 Oral History Project.

Samuel G. Delaney, union delegate and former maintenance worker at the World Trade Center

Woke up about 4 o'clock in the morning to get into work because we had to start at 6 o'clock -- well, I think it was 5 o'clock, 5:30. It was really early in the morning. Came from Rockaway and passed the World Trade Center and just looking at it, saying, ''I miss working there and hanging out with the guys and everything,'' and then went to work.

Ralph Dickerson Jr., president of United Way of New York City

I was a little concerned about whether I was going to be able to spin for the entire time, so I remember cutting the class a little short, because I needed to shower, I need to get downtown, and so I really only spent -- spun 30 minutes that day, got off the bike -- nothing unusual about that morning at all for me -- I was in the shower about 10 to 7.

My goal was to get up very early in the morning to do my citizenship rights as a voter. So I got up very early in the morning. I left the house about 7 o'clock a.m., and I finished voting by 7:15.

Francis A. Keating,national salesman at Bank of New York, in New York City for a meeting

I was invited by the bank to attend a seminar on money laundering at our main operations center at 101 Barclay Street in downtown New York. Instead of driving that day, I got on the Long Island Rail Road, 7:37 train, saw a few people that I knew from the days that I was commuting, but other than that I just grabbed my Wall Street Journal, and they did theirs, and started reading away.

7:59 a.m.
American Airlines Flight 11 takes off from Logan International Airport in Boston with 76 passengers, 11 crew members and 5 hijackers.

Ivy Barsky, deputy director for programs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

I thought to myself, ''Gee, I'm running late; maybe I should forgo my reading the paper or getting work done and just take the E.'' And I would have done one of two things had I taken the E: I either would have taken it to 53rd and Lex and then switched to a 6 and to a 4, 5; or I would have taken it straight to the World Trade Center and walked.

And I remember feeling slightly guilty about it, but saying, ''You know what, I don't have a meeting until 11; I'm going to take my time'' -- not that I would get in at 11, but, ''I'm going to take my plain, old R train.'' And the doors on the E shut, and I waited for my R train.

It was quite a while after that that I thought to myself -- I mean, days and days, if not weeks, after that, that I remembered that whole thought process and thought, ''Now, what would have happened if I were on that E train?'' Because I realized that E train probably would have gotten to the World Trade Center, based on -- because I was probably getting on the subway a little before 8 -- at probably 10 to 9, or something like that.

8:14 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Logan with 51 passengers, 9 crew members and 5 hijackers.

8:19 a.m.
Two flight attendants on Flight 11, Betty Ong and Madeline Amy Sweeney, tell American Airlines of the hijacking; the airline calls the F.B.I.

8:20 a.m.
American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles International Airport near Washington carrying 53 passengers, 6 crew members and 5 hijackers.

Everybody on the street was kind of -- had stopped because of the noise, and was looking up, either at the plane or for the plane, one or the other. Then, like a minute or so -- I don't know what the time span was, but suddenly there was this amazing explosion, and it was completely and totally surreal.

I continued to read my paper and just followed the feet of people in front of me, and everyone -- and it had to be five or six of us -- went in a line over to our set of elevator banks and continuing from 78 to, the floors were 94 to a hundred, and the far right elevator was open at the time, and everyone continued to walk without stopping to get on the elevator, and I was the last person and still reading my newspaper.

I looked down and saw that the elevator was about a little more than half full, and only the space in front of the door was open, and I said, ''You know, I'm going to wait for the next elevator, because I don't want to squeeze on in front of all these people in going to the hundredth floor.''

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: A chronology of events last Sunday with an article about oral histories of the Sept. 11 attacks misstated President George W. Bush's whereabouts at 8:50 a.m. when he was told that a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. He was about to enter Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., to visit a second-grade class; he was not reading to the students at that time. (At 9:05 a.m., he was listening to the students read when he was told that the south tower had been hit by a plane.)